Joi watched the spar between Kyrie and Vane.

“Then here I come, Senior!”

Vane stretched his mechanical arm toward the sky.

Crackle, crackle!

Every time golden sparks burst between the components, identical golden lightning flashed within the clouds overhead.

For an instant, Joi felt the hairs on her body stand upright.

Vane was amplifying his lightning aura.

He said he uses ascending and descending air currents.

Joi knew Kyrie could seize the lightning aura of most Blue Knights midway through activation if he wished.

Yet Kyrie waited until the very last moment.

Flash!

The instant Vane’s golden Lightning Strike descended from the heavens to the earth, Kyrie unleashed lightning from the ground into the sky.

Guided Lightning.

Crackling!

A thin strand of ultra-high-voltage electricity shot upward.

Vane’s golden Lightning Strike rode along Kyrie’s Guided Lightning and flew off into the distant sky.

KWA-KWA-KWAAANG!

His decisive attack ended in failure.

“H-hahahahahahaha! Hahaha!”

Yet Vane burst into hearty laughter.

It was a booming laugh utterly unsuited to his calm appearance.

“Well done!”

“Oooh! Congratulations! The bodily-defect oath really is excellent!”

“Thank you! It’s all thanks to you seniors.”

Kyrie and Frey offered only praise.

Joi now understood why Vane laughed like that.

Because now she laughed that way too.

It was the laughter of one who knew they could continue improving forever.

“Sword aura reinforcement really doesn’t pair well with long-range authorities.”

“Yes. Once it leaves the body, it disperses far too quickly.”

“It’s not impossible to forcefully maintain it.”

“But with Lightning Strike available, there doesn’t seem much reason to.”

Kyrie and Vane briefly reviewed their spar.

They were discussing how sword aura reinforcement matched swordsmanship well, yet poorly complemented electric-arts authorities.

“Wait a second, I do have a reason! I can’t use Lightning Strike! Hey! Hey, Vane! Don’t pretend you can’t see me!”

Frey protested playfully, but when Vane deliberately looked around as though he could not see the short Frey, Frey began rampaging in genuine fury.

Joi revealed herself around the time the two began sparring again.

“My lord.”

“Right. You’ve come? Paisen came too, didn’t she? You’re training lightning reinforcement together anyway, aren’t you?”

“Ah, right now it’s not training. I came because there’s something to report from the Church side.”

“Nothing’s changed since last time, right? Then let’s train first.”

“My lord, haven’t you already finished your lightning reinforcement training?”

“Why? Too tired to continue?”

Kyrie asked teasingly.

“Absolutely not. Do I look that frail to you?”

Joi knew Kyrie continued looking after her even after completing his own training.

So she deliberately laughed frivolously.

Showing obvious emotion over every little thing would only become embarrassing.

“Good. But I’m not frail either, you know? The strain on my muscles has almost completely recovered already.”

“You’ve recovered already?”

“I’m a Blue Knight, remember? My grit is fundamentally different from some insignificant retainer like you.”

“Just wait and see. The moment I become a knight, I’ll ram straight into you.”

“I suppose I’ll have to live another three hundred years.”

Kyrie knew exactly what she meant too.

“Your Highness.”

“Knight Paisen has arrived too? Then let us begin.”

Joi and Paisen trained sword aura reinforcement.

It was not easy.

“No matter how I think about it, I’m a bastard not worth the fucking elixir of sacred radiance!”

Especially Joi, who originally possessed no sense for mana at all, had done nothing but fail for months.

“There are plenty of bastards not even worth the air they breathe. Again!”

That day was different.

Saaaaaa!

A formless golden aura briefly coiled around her fingertips before dispersing.

“You saw that, didn’t you!? You saw that, didn’t you!?”

“Yeah! I saw it.”

“Oooh! Congratulations!”

“One more time, one more time!”

That day, Joi succeeded in sensing the ticklish feeling of drawing a haze from her heart.

Just a little more. If I can grasp one tiny clue, I think I’ll succeed.

The situation report—which had originally been the purpose of her visit—was not delivered until evening.

“What’s the situation?”

“Heheh. Right now, absolutely nothing is going properly.”

Joi laughed bitterly.

It was laughter carrying a completely different meaning from before.

At present, Kyrie’s army had established an encampment on the outskirts of the corpse-waste plains and was advancing slowly.

Every Elector Prince, from Narji of the house of currents to the house of ice Septentrios, had spread wide encirclement lines while continuing their search through the corpse-waste plains.

Their purpose was singular.

The eradication of the Hall of Purity.

If one asked whether matters could truly proceed so simply, then the answer was merely to force them to proceed.

Some had even begun arguing that they should simply kill every living person in the region, for simple destruction itself was the greatest purification.

The seven families—including the royal family—handled the search, while the Church stabilized the cities they passed through and managed supplies for the seven houses.

And neither side was functioning properly.

No matter how I think about it, it feels deliberate.

Joi felt so wronged she could barely endure it.

She looked toward her lord, Kyrie.

He had overthrown the tyrant Ortupios, received the title Defender of the Faith, and performed tremendous feats in Rebellion as well.

What a brilliant and honorable path it had been.

And yet all these people had taken turns obstructing him.

They behaved as though Kyrie himself were the enemy of the world.

“Regimental Commander!”

At that moment, a messenger came galloping from afar.

“Urgent news! The house of earth suffered massive losses after being ambushed by the Hall of Purity!”

A black wind blew across the corpse-waste plains.

Step. Step. Step. Step. Step.

The army of Terra marched forward.

Black Knights and knights adorned with colorful crests and banners displaying their names, retainers and attendants clad in pitch-black full-body armor, and thousands of infantry and cavalry gathered beneath their respective banners passed in endless lines, shaking the earth.

“General! We have lost contact with the reconnaissance detachment!”

The report came flying in.

A man who had received his sword from Tyren.

General Patelos, commander of the twenty-five-thousand-man vanguard, briefly furrowed his brow.

Should he send more scouts? Or delay the advance?

“We continue onward.”

After deliberation, he chose to maintain the march.

On the battlefield, delays of several days in receiving reports were common.

“If we halt every time a detachment gets tangled up by a few skeletons, we shall never even encounter the true enemy.”

That was especially true in the corpse-waste plains.

Thus Patelos’s decision was not particularly arrogant.

Whoooooosh.

It happened then.

Through the dust storm in the distance, a man clad in white robes walked forward.

He wore his hair cropped short and spectacles with wire frames.

“Who are you?”

Patelos shouted.

At the same time, he directed a reprimanding glare toward his adjutant.

This was the march of an army nearly twenty thousand strong.

Dozens of detachments in the hundreds had already advanced ahead in every direction to secure and control the situation.

The very fact that a man like that had approached this close unnoticed was already a problem.

“One who has established his own truth.”

The man in white spread both arms as he declared.

“I am Adler, Doctor of the Hall of Purity, the son who pierces the flaws of logic!”

His voice carried clearly even over the footsteps of twenty thousand soldiers.

“The Hall of Purity?”

“A Doctor!”

The Black Knights widened their eyes.

Patelos drew his sword.

“Force that man to kneel before me immediately! He is an apostate who defied the Myriad Star, an instigator who trampled life beneath his feet and incited slaughter, a reckless traitor who scorned the world itself! We shall expose each of his crimes and destroy him utterly!”

THUDUDUDUDU!

Dozens of heavy cavalry immediately lowered their cavalry lances and charged.

Sand scattered like a storm beneath the horses’ hooves.

The instant the cavalry reached the Doctor—

[“-----!”]

Doctor Adler threw back his head and unleashed a mental wave.

THOOM!

The horses foamed at the mouth and collapsed across the ground.

The riders were thrown from their saddles.

Yet rather than crashing down helplessly, they spun through the air and drew their swords.

“Hah!”

Once one reached the level of attendant, one could withstand one or two ordinary mental waves.

“You bastard!”

The knight commanding the cavalry squad raised his sword even while his vision spun wildly.

Slash!

And the knight’s head flew into the sky.

“Wh—?”

Patelos doubted his own eyes.

Dark-red bone blades erupted from both of the Doctor’s wrists.

His legs bent grotesquely backward into ostrich-like reverse joints.

Slash!

The Doctor accelerated so quickly afterimages lingered behind him, and another knight’s head was severed effortlessly.

Leaping like a massive predatory bird running across the sand, he plunged into the gaps between the riderless cavalrymen.

“Aaaagh!”

“G-get hold of yourselves and raise your swords!”

Slash! Slash! Slash!

Blood sprayed like fountains.

Chests split apart before shields could even rise, and waists snapped before spearpoints could be leveled.

It was monstrous speed.

The elites clad in black armor collapsed across the crimson sands in moments.

“Stab him simultaneously!”

“Nets! Throw the nets!”

“He’s fast! Treat him like a Blue Knight!”

The retainers and attendants making up the cavalry gritted their teeth and charged.

[“-----!”]

Another mental wave erupted.

The eyes of the retainers and attendants unfocused once more.

The hands clutching their nets weakened.

Slash!

The Doctor leapt once again.

Slash! Slash! Shhhhhk!

The twin bone blades carved large and small arcs through the air, severing heads one after another.

Blood splashed everywhere, staining the white robes dark crimson.

“D-did they all die?”

“They were all superhuman soldiers, weren’t they?”

The survivors trembled so badly at the empty spectacle before them that they could no longer even grip their swords.

“Hoo.”

The Doctor slowly raised his head.

The eyes beyond his spectacles locked onto Patelos.

His reverse-jointed legs dug deeply into the sand.

“Prepare to fire!”

Patelos roared until his throat tore.

“Fire the ballistae!”

The ballistae hastily lined themselves into formation.

Swooosh! Swooosh! Swooosh!

The Doctor sneered as he raced wildly between the steel bolts.

The laughter spilling from between his bloodstained lips stretched grotesquely long.

Like the joy of a scholar finding an answer.

Like the certainty that an experiment had succeeded.

“You monster wearing human skin!”

A chill ran down Patelos’s spine.

Soldiers collapsed in rows before the Doctor’s bone blades.

All of them widened their eyes and raised their weapons, yet every time a mental wave swept through them, their blades hesitated—and into that hesitation the bone blades slipped.

Slash, slash, slash!

In the blink of an eye, the spearmen collapsed and the cavalry scattered.

[“O Brass Star!”]

Patelos could endure no longer.

His body became wrapped in dark-brown light while sand and gravel of every size gathered around him.

THOOM!

A Stone Giant rose instantly across the plains.

“Come!”

“Hmph!”

Whoosh!

The moment the Doctor saw the giant, he leapt.

“Huh?”

In the opposite direction.

THUDUDUDUDU!

“T-that bastard is running away!?”

Patelos was too shocked to continue speaking.

Yet no matter how furiously the Stone Giant moved its legs, it could not catch the Doctor.

And even if cavalry were sent after him, they would merely succumb to the mental waves again.

“The casualties?”

“Seven hundred dead, fifteen hundred injured due to the mental waves. One thousand require only recuperation, while five hundred have already begun suffering invasive corruption.”

That very day, two thousand soldiers fell.

[“---, ---!”]

And that night, Doctor Adler appeared once again.

Several hundred more soldiers were rendered combat-ineffective.

“You bastard!”

Patelos raised the Stone Giant and charged, only for the Doctor to flee once again into the distance.

In less than a week, the army of twenty thousand had dwindled into mere thousands.

“I’ll kill him. I swear I’ll kill him.”

Every remaining soldier looked utterly exhausted, while Patelos’s eyes were bloodshot with rage and self-reproach.

Then, the following day—

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Dust clouds rose from beyond the distant horizon.

“Huh?”

Massive shadows surged forward in great numbers.

Mutant demonic beasts.

The plains became consumed by the thunderous echoes of colossal destruction.

.

.

.

“...And thus it happened.”

Tyren’s messenger finished speaking while trembling all over with fury and humiliation.

“We were ordered to deliver this news to all Elector Prince forces. Beware the Doctor-class entities. Please excuse me now. I must also deliver this report to Crown Prince Valherios, and time is critical.”

He mounted his horse once more and departed Kyrie’s encampment.

If they strike and retreat like that, then naturally the house of earth cannot withstand it. The elite Black Knights may survive through Elementalization, but ordinary knights, retainers, and attendants would simply be ground down.

Kyrie rubbed the back of his neck.

Not gigantic monsters, but powerful individual entities repeatedly striking and retreating.

Military doctrines he had studied back at the academy flashed through his mind.

The operational doctrine of the Hall of Purity is fundamentally identical to the doctrine the great houses of the Empire of Stars have used until now.

Spend vast fortunes to create overwhelmingly powerful superhuman noble warriors, then have those warriors fight thousands alone.

It was the only way for an Empire lacking the technological and administrative capacity to maintain centralized rule over vast territories and immense resources.

Troublesome. If we face tactics like that, I do not know whether even we can endure.

At that moment, hoofbeats approached.

“Your Highness! The reconnaissance squad has vanished. There are signs of battle, but no corpses.”

Blue Hydrangea came galloping forward upon horseback, her face drenched in sweat.

Goddammit.

Kyrie forcibly suppressed his emotions.

He could not afford to appear shaken before Vane, Joi, and Blue Hydrangea.

However, there were things Kyrie himself did not know.

So it’s nothing serious? As expected of Senior.

Honestly, comparing those dirt-digging bastards of Terra to our Blue Knights is absurd to begin with. How are those people even superhuman knights? They’re construction engineers. And besides, our lord has lightning reinforcement now, so he can probably fight them in close combat with swordsmanship too.

His Highness Kyrie possesses an extremely wide Bio-radar range, can determine the enemy’s exact position by linking it with the authority of Telephone Conversation, can pursue quickly through Thunderstep, and can launch long-range attacks with Lightning Strike. There is no major cause for concern.

Vane, Joi, and Blue Hydrangea were not especially worried.

The sort of “objective” opinion Kyrie liked.

Therefore, that was probably the correct answer.

Chapter 220

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